5 ms·

I wonder what strategy might have succeeded in Be getting traction against Windows back then? Free from day one? The big problem for any competitor to Windows

I wonder what strategy might have succeeded in Be getting traction against Windows back then? Free from day one? The big problem for any competitor to Windows was that nothing had the drivers support that windows had. Steve Jobs solves that by supporting only his own hardware. Drivers was a huge issue.

kowdermeister 8y ago
> Free from day one? That's great in theory, but how do you then pay the developers?
- tialaramex 8y ago
  The income from selling BeOS wasn't ever covering a significant fraction of R&D costs so who cares? Be was losing about $10M per year from the outset. It never came anywhere close to breaking even. The idea was, either this takes off (in which case you can make money a lot of different ways even if you give the core product away) or the threat that it might forces Apple to buy the whole thing, either way you get your money back and JLG gets what he wants, which is and has always been to be "right" even when he's monumentally and obviously wrong. [ JLG led Apple product development when it was failing, Be which failed, and the Palm spin out that made an OS so lousy even _Palm_ never bothered using it any products. The man is often cited as a "guru" presumably in the same sense as when some random guy is brought in by gullible actors or musicians who've got a lot of money suddenly ] In the late 1990s it looked as though it would probably close its doors and the investors would get nothing (technically they'd get the source code, branding and so on, but those are basically worthless), which happens all the time with that sort of business. But the dot com boom saved them. Not Be, the investors. An Offering was written which under normal circumstances would get laughed out of the room. Ha ha ha, you have a product that nobody uses, and you want a nine figure sum of money for a business with a failed Apple executive and a bunch of hackers, No. But at the time you could write blah blah blah "Internet" blah blah and people wouldn't bother reading past the bottom of the first page of your IPO because they already had their wallets open. So now the original investors had their money back, and gradually the big institutional hitters (e.g. pension companies) could exit too, you take $50000 of BEOS and you sell it to a thousand Be fans for $50 per time, when it turns into $4 of cash five years later you're fine and they learn a valuable lesson about investment. Be got a little bit of money left over. The idea was, pivot into making software for "Internet appliances". You know, the computer next to your stove, or that multi-purpose device in your gym which... oh right, yeah, no, those aren't a thing, the idea went nowhere and Be's business went down in flames. JLG got to go ruin Palm instead.
  - zozbot123 8y ago
    > The idea was, pivot into making software for "Internet appliances". You know, the computer next to your stove, or that multi-purpose device in your gym which... oh right, yeah, no, those aren't a thing Well, they weren't a thing at the time, and couldn't be a thing given the severe lack of wireless, always-on, Internet connections. They definitely are a thing today, but too late to save Be.
rahoulb 8y ago
I remember reading about Hitachi being prepared to preinstall Be as a dual-boot system - but then Microsoft threatened to pull their Windows licences. The anti-trust stuff wasn't just about browsers. Interested to hear if Gassee talks about that in this series.
endemic 8y ago
IIRC the big problem was Microsoft refusing to allow OEMs to ship machines with other operating systems.

kowdermeister 8y ago

> Free from day one? That's great in theory, but how do you then pay the developers?

tialaramex 8y ago
The income from selling BeOS wasn't ever covering a significant fraction of R&D costs so who cares? Be was losing about $10M per year from the outset. It never came anywhere close to breaking even. The idea was, either this takes off (in which case you can make money a lot of different ways even if you give the core product away) or the threat that it might forces Apple to buy the whole thing, either way you get your money back and JLG gets what he wants, which is and has always been to be "right" even when he's monumentally and obviously wrong. [ JLG led Apple product development when it was failing, Be which failed, and the Palm spin out that made an OS so lousy even _Palm_ never bothered using it any products. The man is often cited as a "guru" presumably in the same sense as when some random guy is brought in by gullible actors or musicians who've got a lot of money suddenly ] In the late 1990s it looked as though it would probably close its doors and the investors would get nothing (technically they'd get the source code, branding and so on, but those are basically worthless), which happens all the time with that sort of business. But the dot com boom saved them. Not Be, the investors. An Offering was written which under normal circumstances would get laughed out of the room. Ha ha ha, you have a product that nobody uses, and you want a nine figure sum of money for a business with a failed Apple executive and a bunch of hackers, No. But at the time you could write blah blah blah "Internet" blah blah and people wouldn't bother reading past the bottom of the first page of your IPO because they already had their wallets open. So now the original investors had their money back, and gradually the big institutional hitters (e.g. pension companies) could exit too, you take $50000 of BEOS and you sell it to a thousand Be fans for $50 per time, when it turns into $4 of cash five years later you're fine and they learn a valuable lesson about investment. Be got a little bit of money left over. The idea was, pivot into making software for "Internet appliances". You know, the computer next to your stove, or that multi-purpose device in your gym which... oh right, yeah, no, those aren't a thing, the idea went nowhere and Be's business went down in flames. JLG got to go ruin Palm instead.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  > The idea was, pivot into making software for "Internet appliances". You know, the computer next to your stove, or that multi-purpose device in your gym which... oh right, yeah, no, those aren't a thing Well, they weren't a thing at the time, and couldn't be a thing given the severe lack of wireless, always-on, Internet connections. They definitely are a thing today, but too late to save Be.

rahoulb 8y ago

I remember reading about Hitachi being prepared to preinstall Be as a dual-boot system - but then Microsoft threatened to pull their Windows licences. The anti-trust stuff wasn't just about browsers. Interested to hear if Gassee talks about that in this series.

endemic 8y ago

IIRC the big problem was Microsoft refusing to allow OEMs to ship machines with other operating systems.